“You won’t have to,” Killian assured. “We take him down. Then she removes the darkness from Knox. If we have to go with Plan B, I’ll ensure he doesn’t harm Aria, Esme. I’ll do what he ordered me to do in order to save her and our people.” At Killian’s reassurance, Esme’s eyes drifted to him, which caused Basilius to rattle with possessiveness.
“I think the fuck not,” I snapped sharply, as a rattle tried to claw its way up my throat. “Killian, I am saving Knox. You need to at least allow me to try to save him. He’d come for me, just as he’d come for anyone else here if they were in trouble.”。
“Knox wouldn’t want that for you. He’d want you to live, even if it meant letting him go, Aria. If he killed you and somehow survived? How do you see that playing out?” Killian countered with a plea burning in his eyes.
“No. No, Knox has to live. He has to because I can’t breathe without him.” The words trickled from my lips, as gasps of shuddered breaths forced their way through the pain gripping my throat. “He’s going to be a father. Hecate doesn’t get to win. Do you fucking hear me?” My voice trembled with agony and paralyzing fear. “Hecate doesn’t get to win this time. She’s taken everything from Knox. I’ll be damned if she takes his life away from him, too. Stick to the fucking plan. I give you my word that if shit goes sideways, I’ll get everyone out. We’ll regroup and figure out a different way to get him back.”
“You’re pregnant?” Killian asked through narrowed eyes. “Aria?”
“Ember told me right before the girls began hitting Acheron. It changes nothing.”
“It fucking changes everything. Women don’t go into battle pregnant!”
“Yes, they fucking do. A woman’s life is a never-ending war, Killian. Women fight from the moment they take their first breath until they breathe their last. They’ve gone to war plenty of times before, and I will be no different from the women who came before me. I can fight her pregnant. I have to do this. I took precautions to ensure that what happened last time doesn’t happen again.” Shaking my head, I straightened my spine and looked around at the faces before me.
“I shouldn’t have placed you in a box with the women I know, Aria. You’re truly nothing like them, but Knox wouldn’t come back from harming you. He wouldn’t come back from it if you’re harmed, or worse, you died.”
“I am no damsel, Killian. I’m going to go save my fucking dragon. With or without you. That’s your choice to make. I’ve made mine.”
“You’ve come a long way since the na?ve, soft girl we met not long ago.” Killian smiled, his eyes sparkling with mirth.
“Plan B is I run, he chases and I don’t stop running. Ember can escape him. She’s aware of the problem at hand. In the abandoned village three miles south of here, there’s a well. It’s spelled already, and it’s deep. If I can get him in it, we can use it. Plan C will be nuclear. Do you all understand the plan?” When they nodded, I felt a prickle of fear at the idea of running from Knox. He was a better hunter, better runner, better fucking everything than I was.
“What aren’t you saying?” Esme asked, her perceptive stare festering with worry.
“It’s not just me who needs him back,” I admitted. “Knox has had access to the Library of Knowledge, which contains a detailed history of everything that’s occurred, every creature’s creation, their weaknesses. By taking him, she’s taken the library, as well. Since he was a child, that has been his favorite place. He’s an archive in which she can continually pull information from, against all of us. It holds both the phoenix and dragon histories, but also what can wipe the races out? If she maintains control? We’re not fucked. We’ll all go extinct. So, no. She can’t keep the repository of knowledge he holds within his mind. Even if his soul dies, the knowledge and shit that aren’t a part of his soul, like memories, remain.”
“That’s why Julia never remembered me,” Soraya uttered.
“Exactly why she didn’t. Julia’s soul left long before Hecate killed her body.” Smiling sadly at her, I felt Ember adding warmth to tell me she was there. “We tie emotions to faces instead of souls. But we are merely souls in outer shells, which often leave when they become too much to carry around. You said you sister was gentle, so she didn’t stick around long enough to feel the pain Hecate would’ve forced her to feel.”
“You’re lying, but I’ll take it,” she said tightly. “Lies are what we feed on nowadays. While we pray for better ones to find us.”
“Lies, or days?” Esme asked with her eyebrows shoved together.
“I’m not as good as Aria with the whole ‘speech’ shit,” she scoffed with a soft shrug. “I was giving it a whirl.”
“Do me a solid, Soraya, leave the speeches for the queen?” Esme snorted, even as she put on a brave face, smiling. Soraya bumped Esme’s shoulder, which sent Esme into Siobhan, who leaned her head against her.
“You bitches know we’re all going to die. If we don’t, Aria is going to go back to demanding I help her hide a body.” Soraya and Siobhan’s stares slid to me at Esme’s statement.
“It’s a metaphor. We’re not actually digging a grave to hide a body. That would be way too much work when Ember could just eat the evidence.” At my explanation, Esme’s mouth dropped open.
“This is why we can’t be best friends.” Folding her arms over her breasts, she offered me a withering stare.
“I thought you two were so close because you were lesbians,” Acheron offered while scratching his head as confusion stamped over his face.
“What?” Esmeralda demanded.
“That’s what Aria’s creature said. That you two are the best lesbians.”
Esme’s eyes swung toward me, rounding wider as she absorbed what he’d said. “Are you fucking me?”
“Are you offering to . . . wait, what’s happening here?” I replied, trying to figure out what she’d meant. “I mean, honestly, Esme? I like meat. I’m a carnivore. Of course, if that’s what you prefer? Then I’ll support you wholeheartedly on your vegan diet of that pink, meatless taco. Shit, I already have a rainbow unicorn jacket, so I’m dressed for the job as your bestie already!” Her nose scrunched before her head tilted to the side.
“So, this isn’t a joke?”
“Oh, I see.” I grimaced as color burned my cheeks. I was so only eating lettuce for the next fifty years to punish Ember for this shit. “No, you’re supposed to say ‘You’re not fucking with me.’ See, that’s why it’s important to pay attention if you intend to steal my slang. Either that, or you’ll continue walking around, asking people to fuck you.”
“What did I say?”
“Are you fucking me?” I asked and fluttered my lashes dramatically.
“I seriously didn’t ask you to fuck me.”
“Did too,” Acheron argued.
“Ladies and Acheron, if we don’t leave soon, we’ll lose him,” Eva said, forcing us back to reality.